FILM REVIEW: Logan (15)

Now in cinemas ... Logan.

Published:12:00Sunday 12 March 2017

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Nature made me a freak. Man made me a weapon. And God made it last too long.

The angry claw handed Wolverine is back for one possibly final epic big screen outing, older, more damaged and suffering from his lifetime of violence. We’ve come a long way since Hugh Jackman made the role his own seventeen years ago and yet Logan manages to be the best, most brutal and altogether most meaningful X-Men movie to date.

In the near future mutants are an endangered species. All that’s left of the mighty X-Men are Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier who at 90 is finding his super brain succumbing to degenerative disease and classified as a weapon of mass destruction. Logan is a broken mutant himself, addicted to liquor and drugs just to get by. He and Stephen Merchant’s waning Caliban are trying to protect Professor X from the nefarious military authorities who are hunting them.

Logan is a poignant glimpse into what happens when heroic mutants are aged and jaded. With their powers waning and their world view tainted – these final X-remnants come across a young new mutant Laura, also known as ‘X23’ (a star making turn from upcoming young Dafne Keen) who brings a world of trouble to their lives.

The bad guys of the piece are headed up by nasty mechanically handed Donald Pierce (Boyd ‘Gone Girl’ Holbrook) who works for evil Dr. Rice (Richard E. ‘Hudson Hawk’ Grant). They want Laura ‘off the board’ as she’s escaped from a new mutant experiment programme – but they’ll have to go through Logan to get to her. Cue some of the best super action ever.

Laura is the most lethal big screen 11-year-old since Kick Ass’s Hit Girl and she acts up a storm, reminiscent of young Natalie Portman in Leon. Patrick Stewart is excellent too but Jackman is just incredible and this is his best performance as Wolverine.

Not your average super-movie, Logan is a fantastic conclusion to the Wolverine trilogy and makes every other X-Men movie look weak in comparison.